Little Dorrit

He went out, and she shut the door upon him. He looked up
at the windows of his mother's room, and the dim light, deadened
by the yellow blinds, seemed to say a response after Affery, and to
mutter, 'Don't ask me anything. Go away!'

CHAPTER XI A LETTER FROM LITTLE DORRIT

DEAR MR. CLENNAM,

As I said in my last that it was best for nobody to write to me,
and as my sending you another letter can therefore give you no
other trouble than the trouble of reading it (perhaps you may not
find leisure for even that, though I hope you will some day), I am
now going to devote an hour in writing to you again. This time,
I write from Rome.

We left Venice before Mr. and Mrs. Gowan did, but they were
not so long upon the road as we were, and did not travel by the
same way, and so when we arrived we found them in a lodging
here, in a place called the Via Gregoriana. I dare say you know it.

Now I am going to tell you all I can about them, because I
know that is what you most want to hear. Theirs is not a very
comfortable lodging, but perhaps I thought it less so when I first
saw it than you would have done, because you have been in many
different countries and have seen many different customs. Of
course it is a far, far better place -- millions of times -- than any
I have ever been used to until lately; and I fancy I don't look at
it with my own eyes, but with hers. For it would be easy to see
that she has always been brought up in a tender and happy home,
even if she had not told me so with great love for it.

Well, it is a rather bare lodging up a rather dark common stair-
case, and it is nearly all a large dull room, where Mr. Gowan
paints. The windows are blocked up where any one could look
out, and the walls have been all drawn over with chalk and charcoal by others who have lived there before -- oh, -- I should think,
for years! There is a curtain more dust-coloured than red, which
divides it, and the part behind the curtain makes the private
sitting-room. When I first saw her there she was alone, and her
work had fallen out of her hand, and she was looking up at the
sky shining through the tops of the windows. Pray do not be uneasy when I tell you, but it was not quite so airy, nor so bright,

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